Minnesota road projects in flux as Congress debates bill

An $18 million plan to remake the intersection of Highway 7 and Louisiana Avenue in St. Louis Park relies on $7 million in federal funding. (Staff photo: Bill Klotz)

As a Congressional conference committee hashes out a transportation funding bill, state and local officials are playing a difficult game of “what if.”

Although the latest funding extension expires on June 30, Congress still hasn’t agreed on how much funding to include in the package.

The uncertainty has left state and local transportation officials to craft their future transportation plans — including road and bridge work, bike and pedestrian trails, and transit enhancements — without knowing exactly how much federal support may be available.

Minnesota received $675 million in federal highway funds this year, which is not at risk, and officials are operating under the assumption that the state will receive the same amount next year. Beyond that, the funding picture is unclear.

Cuts are expected, though. The Minnesota Department of Transportation is creating contingency plans that assume federal funding will be cut by up to one-third and that no earmarks will be granted.

Serge Phillips, the federal relations manager for MnDOT, gave an update Wednesday to the Metropolitan Council’s Transportation Advisory Board. Deliberations in Congress are expected to come to a head this week.

Phillips said he anticipated funding cuts that would lead to delays in new construction and maintenance, although some projects would still get finished.

“If there’s a drive to get something done, it will get done,” he said. “But it will get done at the expense of something else.”

The Transportation Advisory Board already is facing such trade-offs. The group met Wednesday to consider projects that could occur in 2015 and 2016 and debated two ways of dealing with future cuts: reducing some funding for all projects or delaying some altogether.

Board members said that delaying projects would only increase future costs, and that it would be difficult to choose winners and losers. But giving a group of projects less money would only push more costs to local partners.

“We’re trying to figure out how we do this in a fair and objective way,” said Edina Mayor James Hovland, a member of the board. “And I think in this situation you say to everyone, ‘There just isn’t as much to go around.’”

The board ultimately decided to schedule more than $160 million worth of projects for the 2015-16 program year, but only after bumping some projects to the bottom of the list.

The board also is planning to reevaluate how it scores projects in the future.

“In a resource-constrained environment, we want to support the most worthy projects,” said Bill Hargis, the transportation board’s chairman.

Municipalities rely heavily on federal support to complete large transportation projects, and could have a difficult time making up for future losses.

In St. Louis Park, an $18.4 million plan to remake the intersection of Highway 7 and Louisiana Avenue relies on more than $7 million in federal funding. State and local funds are paying the remaining costs.

Plans for the work are being finalized now, and right of way is being pursued in hopes of beginning construction next year.

Without federal funding, the project would be at a “huge detriment” and “probably wouldn’t happen,” said Jim Olson, the project manager for St. Louis Park. Olson said he was not concerned about a loss of funding, however.

Lawmakers have failed to reach agreement on a multiyear federal transportation bill since 2005, and instead have passed a series of temporary extensions.

Another extension, which would be the 10th since the multiyear bill expired in 2009, has been passed by the House and would continue funding through September. The Senate has passed a two-year bill.

MnDOT’s Phillips said a multiyear bill would allow planners to move ahead on projects with more confidence than they would get through a short-term extension.

“That uncertainty of what will happen has an impact,” he said. “What we’re trying to get is a bill that locks in funding parameters for the long term.”

U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., a member of the House Transportation Committee, urged the conference committee working on a resolution this week to come to a quick compromise.

“We simply can’t afford to kick the can down the crumbling road by passing another short-term extension that doesn’t give local small businesses and construction workers the certainty they need to plan for the future,” he said in a statement.